| Personal background |
|
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
Why do you run SETI@home?
I run Seti@home because it's irresistable.
First, there's the whole Carl Sagan, let's find out if we're alone angle, but even more than that, there's the satisfaction of participating in a shared computing project with over 3-million other computer users.
That's the largest collaborative project ever on this planet.
Even if we don't find anything, Seti@home has opened the door to altruistic cooperative computing...
But if we DO find something... that's the only event which could possibly dwarf the day man first set foot on the Moon.
aThoughts about ETI
There has to be a distinction made between extraterrestrial life and intelligent extraterrestrial life. Seti@home is looking for the latter, and it's a long shot at best. Interstellar--not to mention intergalactic-- distances are killers. (and we already know there's nothing happening in our neighborhood.) Any intelligence we discover is apt to have more of a philosophic or psychological impact than a technological one (despite what I and my peers write about!)
On the other hand, organic molecules keep turning up in the darndest places and I'm really hopeful that we'll stumble across some verifiable extra-terrestrial DNA before I'm gone (and, yes -- I expect it will be a recognizable cognate of terrestrial DNA)
As far as trasmitting signals -- we're transmitting so many of them by accident, adding deliberate ones seems like carrying coals to Newcastle... though the sentimental impact of the Voyager projects is undeniable.a |
| Your feedback on this profile |
| Recommend this profile for User of the Day: | I like this profile |
| Alert administrators to an offensive profile: | I do not like this profile |
|
|
